Mary Taylor Martof

Alice's Story Mary Taylor Martof

In the French Quarter of New Orleans, 32-year-old Alice Hollister faces her father's ghost in a voodoo séance and learns secrets that will change the life of this defrocked nurse forever. When a child, Alice's alcoholic mother told her repeatedly that she was defective. Still in her childhood when her father died in an oil-well explosion, Alice had no one to tell her, "I see your little light, and it's just precious." So she is unaware of the light in her soul and survives by pleasing others. Her life is filled with pain. Not realizing that she has created much of it herself, by replacing a search for identity with people pleasing, Alice turns to alcohol and eventually heroin for relief. She steals drugs from her employer and becomes defrocked from nursing. Prostitution appears to be the only way to support her addictions. But a phoenix, a bird with magical powers, turns her life around. She retraces certain paths she has taken and finds that evasive inner light leading to her authentic self.